The Boeing Co. plans to be ready to fly commercial space taxis from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station by 2015 and soon will decide where the spacecraft will be manufactured and assembled, officials said Thursday.

In the latest space race to lift paying customers out of Earth's atmosphere aviation safety regulators occupy a new niche: They are promoting an industry expected to suffer deadly accidents instead of applying strict safety rules. Federal Aviation Administration officials detailed their unique relationship with the emerging space-tourism industry for a gathering of air and space lawyers this month.

NASA chose two companies both recovering from different failures to develop a new commercial spaceship. The space agency would provide $500 million over the next five years to develop and test launch new spacecraft that could eventually take cargo to the international space station.

Some 120 miles higher than the International Space Station orbits, an alternate vision for spaceflight has arrived. The successfullaunch and deployment of a motel tycoon's dream add an important dimension to efforts to open the final frontier to Everyman, analysts say.

An experimental spacecraft bankrolled by real estate magnate Robert Bigelow successfully inflated in orbit Wednesday, testing a technology that could be used to fulfill his dream of building a commercial space station.

An experimental inflatable spacecraft bankrolled by real estate magnate Robert Bigelow rocketed into orbit Wednesday to test technology that could be used to fulfill his dream of building a commercial space station. The Genesis I satellite flew aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile from Russia's southern Ural Mountains.

To spur the development of space tourism, Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace has introduced the $50 million America's Space Prize. To win the money, a spacecraft will have to carry a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude, repeating the feat within 60 days.